Creatures live in Twilight’s shadow

Beautiful Creatures is being touted by Hollywood as the next Twilight and is set to join The Hunger Games as this year’s addictive guilty pleasure as a movie based on addictive young adult lit.

It’s a big year for the genre, with The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, starring Lily Collins, also due out. But does Beautiful Creatures have what it takes to rival the lure of Twilight’s R-Patz and K-Stew?

Beautiful Creatures had a lukewarm opening in the US ($7.5 million in its opening weekend) and the jury is still out on whether a sequel will be made.

Melbourne University pop culture expert Dr Lauren Rosewarne said it wouldn’t rival Twilight because the books weren’t as popular.

“The difference was that the books of Hunger Games and Twilight were bigger sellers than these books,” Rosewarne said.

“So that already changes the pre-film buzz.

“This is a popular book but not to the extent of Twilight or Hunger Games.”

Beautiful Creatures is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and is the first in a series of four novels known as The Caster Chronicles.